John
Gray estimated that there were about 34 lodges of Sihasapa or
Blackfeet Lakota at the Little Bighorn (1976 p. 356). We also
know that there were two Sihasapa leaders present: Crawler and
Kill Eagle (both discussed below on their own seperate threads).
We know from John Grass and Charger (published in Dorsey 1897
p. 219-220) that Kill Eagle's band was known as Wajaje (not
to be confused with the Brule/Oglala tiyospaye by the same name).
Part of the Wajaje Sihasapa had remained at the Standing Rock
Agency in 1876 while part were out hunting with Kill Eagle.
But I do not know the name of Crawler's band.

Dorsey
(1897) lists the names of five or six Sihasapa bands: Real Blackfeet
[I assume the band of John Grass], Wears Raven Feathers, Wajaje,
and Hohe. John Grass lists the band Shell Ear Pendant; Charger
does not, but does include one called Five Lodges, possibly
the same band. Finally, Grass mentions a band translated as
the Untidy/Sloven, though Charger apparently said this was not
a Blackfoot band. Other than Kill Eagle, however, Dorsey does
not attach the names of these bands to any prominent Sihasapa
leaders.

Looking
at the census records for the Standing Rock Agency between 1876
and 1888, we can see at least seven distinct bands (see attached
image). Some Sihasapa also settled at the Cheyenne River Agency,
though I do not know who.

—
Ephriam Dickson

According
to the Cheyenne River Agency census conducted in January 1875
the following were the Sihasapa band headmen there:

There
is no hint as to band affiliation. We know less about the Sihasapa
sub-bands and their leading families than any other of the Teton
tribal divisions. — Kingsley
Bray

Elk
that Looks, headman in 1875, is listed in White Cloud's band
in 1876. — Kingsley Bray

This
piece bears on the earlier phases of Sihasapa history. It appears
on LaDonna's website for the Standing Rock Tribal Tourism office
- www.standingrocktourism.com.

ORIGINS
OF THE SIHASAPA
(BLACKFOOT SIOUX) TRIBE

BY

KINGSLEY
M. BRAY

When
Lakota peoples settled on the Great Sioux Reservation after
the Treaty of 1868, several tribal divisions chose the northernmost
agency – known after 1874 as Standing Rock – as their home.
Yanktonai people of both the Upper and Lower (or Hunkpatina)
divisions settled in the North Dakota segment of the reservation.
Down the Missouri south from reservation headquarters, and along
the Grand River, settled people belonging to two tribal divisions
of the Teton Lakota – the Hunkpapa and the Sihasapa, or Blackfoot
Sioux.

Because
of the fame of leaders like Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa attracted
the attention of early historians of the Sioux wars. Writers
like Stanley Vestal interviewed elders extensively about Hunkpapa
history, helping us to reconstruct the early band and leadership
structure of that tribe (see THE HUNKPAPA TRIBE section on this
website). The situation is very different for the Sihasapa.
The principal Sihasapa leader of Sitting Bull’s generation was
John Grass, one of the great statesmen of the Lakota people
–and one of the greatest Lakota warriors in intertribal wars
with foes like the Arikaras. In one of the bitter ironies of
Lakota history, the commitment of men like John Grass to peace,
dialog and diplomacy with the U.S.A. made them a lot less interesting
to historians concentrating on the clashes and battles of the
Indian Wars. Consequently we know a lot less about the Sihasapa
and the early families that shaped their tribal organization
and leadership. So what follows is a preliminary exploration
of Sihasapa beginnings – but since one Lakota consultant of
mine identified the Sihasapa as “really great scouts” maybe
a scouting expedition into their deep past is no bad starting
point!

One
of John Grass’s contributions to the history of his people was
an interview he gave in 1880 to ethnologist James Owen Dorsey
listing the six bands or tiyoshpaye into which the Sihasapa
tribe was divided. Each band was a cluster of extended families
linked by blood, marriage and ceremonial (hunka) adoption. For
most of the year people lived in band-level camps, but each
summer they gathered in larger tribal villages to hunt the buffalo
and offer the great ceremony of the Sun Dance. The village was
pitched in a great circle, with each band assigned a place.
Special honor was accorded certain places in the circle such
as the ‘horns’ that flanked the east-facing entrance or tiyopa,
and the chief place facing the tiyopa.

John
Grass identified the locations of each band in the Sihasapa
circle as follows. Next to the tiyopa, band no. 1 occupied the
south horn, then the sequence follows the circle sunwise round
to the north horn where band no. 6 was located.

What
we don’t know is which families and chiefs belonged to which
band. From his interview with John Grass, Dorsey did note that
the contemporary chief of the Wazhazha band was Kill Eagle,
a prominent headman whose report of the Battle of the Little
Bighorn is one of the great Lakota historical accounts. Strangely,
when John Grass was re-interviewed over thirty years later about
Sihasapa bands, he gave a partial list and again remarked in
passing that the Wazhazha was Kill Eagle’s band – but again
didn’t identify the other bands with names of leaders! Maybe
modern descendants can help in providing this important information
which will help understand the past of the Sihasapa people.

One
thing that Lakota accounts seem to agree on is that the Sihasapa
and their Hunkpapa neighbors are sister tribes, offshoots of
a single parent group. One of the new treasure troves of the
Standing Rock tribal archives is the collection of Col. A. B.
Welch’s papers, drawing on decades of interviews he conducted
with the people of Standing Rock. In 1928 Fast Horse told Welch
“How Tetonawa Tribes were named”. In his discussion Fast Horse
mentioned of the Sihasapa that “One time they were Hunkpapas.”

The
seven Teton tribes (the Hunkpapa, Sihasapa, Sans Arc, Two Kettle,
Miniconjou, Oglala and Brule) of the Lakota Nation have for
centuries lived on the prairies of western Minnesota and the
Dakotas. As they migrated into and across the Missouri River
valley during the 18th Century they acquired horses from the
plains and firearms from French and British traders. Increased
warfare and new European diseases decimated many bands and destroyed
others, survivors shifting to join relatives across the Lakota
world. It was a period of great change, and older divisions
broke up and reassembled in new tribal groupings. New names
replaced old, families found new homes or formed new bands.
Bands ancestral to the Hunkpapa-Sihasapa group, for instance,
were originally part of the Oglala but broke away, intermarried
with other Tetons and other tribes like the Cheyennes and Arikaras,
to create powerful new tribes out of the demographic chaos of
the 18th Century.

According
to traditions from the Cheyenne River Reservation (where part
of the Sihasapa also settled) at a time when the Tetons were
encamped on the Vermillion River in southeast South Dakota,
a smaller camp stayed behind when the main village moved on.
Meshing tradition with contemporary European accounts and maps,
my guess would be that this split fits somewhere in the period
1725-50. One extended family group of the stay-behinds, maybe
60 people, stuck together to form their own tiyoshpaye. Living
in five tipis, they were a small band to claim autonomy – symbolised
by a council fire that band elders preserved as they moved across
the prairies – so they were known as Ti-Zaptan or Five Lodges.
Direct descendants of this tiyoshpaye settled among the Sihasapa
community at Cheyenne River.

Like
all Lakotas, young Ti-Zaptan people had to marry outside their
band. Because of strong purposeful leadership by wise elders,
industrious women, and brave hunter-warriors, certain bands
drew outsiders keen to marry-in. Such was the Ti-Zaptan in the
mid-18th Century, for over the next decades two new tiyoshpaye
grew up and offshooted from the band. Their leading families
were related – headmen perhaps addressing each other as ‘brothers’
– forming a strong but flexible camp organization. The first
offshoot tiyoshpaye were the Real Sihasapa band. Stories accounting
for their origin recall a big prairie fire: Fast Horse’s account
to Welch says that a woman without moccasins walked through
the charred prairie, “her feet . . . covered with ashes and
black. So that is what we call it, those people.”

During
the next generation – say 1750-75 – a second offshoot formed
the Crow Feather Hair Ornaments band. The cluster of these three
founding tiyoshpaye was probably identified during the 19th
Century with the Grass family and its political allies. John
Grass’s father, also known as Grass, and as Used As Their Shield,
born into a family with Oglala origins, emerged as a key leader
in the early 1850s. His father Si Chola, or Bare Foot, is also
said to have been a great chief. In his account to Welch, John
Grass dwelled on the two bands Real Sihasapa and Crow Feather
Hair Ornaments, just as he named them first in his version of
the camp circle. In the camp-circle layout, this founding cluster
of bands occupied the southeast segment, the ‘home horn’ suitable
for a parent group.

After
1750 the growing Sihasapa camp attracted growing numbers of
outsiders, independent bands that brought their own council
fires. Fire Heart V (1851-1926) was the direct descendant of
one of the most important of these incomers. He told Col. Welch
how people from “several Dakotah bands and tribes” joined the
camp, which became known generally as the Sihasapa after the
largest of the constituent tiyoshpaye.

Perhaps
the first of the incomers was the Hohe band. The name is used
to designate the Assiniboine tribe, who split from the Sioux
late in prehistory, but in the French colonial period a Sioux
band called “Horhetons” or Hohe Village was located on the Mississippi
River near modern Sauk Rapids, Minnesota. Perhaps they were
originally an Assiniboine band that chose not to join hostilities
against the parent-people in the warfare of the mid-17th Century.
Clearly a sizeable group in 1700, the Horhetons disappear from
the record, but the name Hohe persists as that of a small Sihasapa
band. Perhaps they were the “Sioux of the West” village that
traders learned was massacred by the Crees in 1741, with several
hundred people killed or sold into French slavery – the survivors
finding refuge with generous kinsmen among the Sihasapa.

The
Sans Arc – the Itazipcho, or Without Bows – tribe is said to
be the origin of another band, the Cowrie Shell Earrings, that
intermarried with the Sihasapa later in the 18th Century. Reflecting
close political alliance with the Real Sihasapa founding cluster
across the tiyopa entrance, they were assigned the place in
the camp circle next to the north horn.

At
some point probably in the period 1775-1800 a very prestigious
family from the Miniconjou tribe joined the Sihasapa. The family
was that of Fire Heart. The first leader of that name was said
to have been a Miniconjou who flourished in the 1730s, according
to family traditions collected by Col. Welch. Fire Heart II
seems to have been the leader who brought the family into the
Sihasapa circle. Because the Sihasapa share one band name with
the Miniconjou – the Glaglahecha or Slovenly band – it may be
that the Fire Heart dynasty is to be identified with the Glaglahecha.
Again, Fire Heart family descendants may hold the knowledge
that can help us identify their ancestral tiyoshpaye. The Glaglahecha
band among the Miniconjou is identified with another great chiefly
dynasty of the Tetons, the White Swan (Maga Ska) family.

By
1823 Fire Heart III, identified in a contemporary journal as
“a very powerful warrior”, was not only the principal Sihasapa
tribal leader, but considered by traders in Minnesota as the
most influential chief among the Teton divisions. Given the
context of this information, it is likely that in the final
years (ca. 1815-30) of the Dakota Rendezvous – the great trading
gathering of the Sioux held each May on the James River (modern
Armadale Island, South Dakota) – Fire Heart was accorded special
honor as the ranking Teton wichasha yatapika (Honored Man) in
the interdivisional councils where leaders from across the Lakota
world met.

A
rivalry existed in the 19th Century between the Grass and Fire
Heart families. Fire Heart IV married a sister of Used As Their
Shield, but the brash sarcasm indulged in by Lakota brothers-in-law
was probably at its most pointed in this particular relationship!
John Grass’s widow recalled to Col. Welch that “there was something
between Fire Heart and Chief Grass and had been for many years”.
Perhaps this underlies John Grass’s additional remark on the
Glaglahecha band. After explaining the meaning of the name as
slovenly or untidy, he went one further and added these people
were “Too lazy to tie their moccasins”! The fact that he also
located them in the segment of the camp-circle occupying the
chief-place opposite the tiyopa entrance, may be an acknowledgement,
rivalry notwithstanding, of his recognition of the Fire Heart
family’s eminence.

A
final incoming band was the Wazhazha, whose complex origins
show up just how widely intermarriage linked the peoples of
the plains. At an earlier generation intertribal truces were
marked by extensive intermarriage between Tetons and the Ponca
tribe, who pursued a mixed farming-hunting life in southwest
South Dakota and northern Nebraska. The resulting band was called
the Wazhazha, taking its name from one of the most important
Ponca clans. Tracing back, the Wazhazha clan grouping had its
origins among the vast Dhegiha grouping of southern Siouan tribes
– today’s Poncas, Omahas, Kansas or Kaws, Osages, and Quapaws.
Each of these major groups contained a powerful clan called
Wazhazha, identified with the Powers of the Water and the Snake.
Archaeologists are increasingly confident that ancestral Dhegihan
peoples were involved in the great Mississippian civilizations
of the Midwest, leagues and tribal confederacies that built
great cities such as Cahokia (opposite modern St. Louis) around
temple mounds and extensive floodplain fields. My guess would
be that the Wazhazha name had its origins in the Mississippian
world. Because of the fame and honor attached, it was carried
out by migrants into the prairies as the Mississippian societies
imploded in the centuries 1300-1600.

The
Teton-Ponca intermarriages of the mid-18th Century created a
Wazhazha band that, after warfare was resumed with the Ponca,
settled largely among the Brule division of Tetons. Late in
the century, however, offshoot people joined the northern Teton
divisions, some founding a Wazhazha band among the Sihasapa
in the period 1800-25. They were assigned a place in the northwest
segment of the camp-circle, analogous to the seat of an honored
guest in the tipi.

Through
the first quarter of the 19th Century in-migration continued
to swell Sihasapa numbers to peak about 900 people. Important
Sihasapa links to British trading personnel in Minnesota like
Robert Dickson and Joseph Renville were probably fundamental
to this situation during the period of British-U.S. rivalry
that culminated in the War of 1812. After British defeat, however,
and the post-1820 expansion of American trade along the Missouri
River, eastern trade links became unimportant. The Sihasapa
increasingly hunted, traded, and offered a joint Sun Dance with
their Hunkpapa relatives. After a century of rapid growth and
political dynamism, in 1825 the Sihasapa entered a new period
in their tribal history.

As
I’ve tried to make clear, this essay is very much a preliminary
effort at tracing Sihasapa history. There must be many families
on Standing Rock today who can help us to fill out and correct
the picture I’ve sketched. Why not contact Tribal Tourism chief
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard and help us tell the true stories
of all the people of Standing Rock?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In
helping to gather traditions bearing on the early history of
the Sihasapa, I offer thanks to three modern historians of the
Lakota people – LaDonna Brave Bull Allard (Fort Yates); Sebastian
‘Bronco’ LeBeau (Eagle Butte); Victor Douville (Mission). PILA
MAYE!

KINGSLEY
M. BRAY
DECEMBER 4, 2006.—
Kingsley Bray

White
Bear that Goes Out is a Blackfoot Sioux Chief George Catlin
painted probably at Fort Pierre in 1832.
Another early name of a Blackfoot Sioux chief I found is in
Joseph N. Nicollet´s list 1939. He stated that Empty Chest
(Chuwirandorecha) is chief of 100 lodges of Sia-sappa at Grand
River.

Th.
A. Culbertson in 1850 listed 5 bands of Sihasapa:
The cuts – des Coupes (Chief Red Bull)
The black footed ones (Chief Bad Bull)
The bad looking ones (Chief White Thunder)
Those that camp next to the last
The Crow Feather band

Only
two of theses band-names fit to the list Kingsley posted above.

On
to the treaty of Fort Sully in 1865. Here only two Blackfoot
signed as Chiefs: Grass aka Used as a Shield and War Eagle in
the Air (Wah-mun-dee-wak-kon-o).
Some more Sihasapa signed as “principal braves or soldiers”,
some of them would later be rated as chiefs: Fears the Bear,
Black Stag, Stag Man, Good Bear, Buffalo with a Fine Voice,
Track that Rings as it Walks, Long Dog, Dog War Eagle, Has the
War Eagle, Blue Iron, Fire Heart, Two Hearts, Little Blackfoot
(1875/76 at Cheyenne River), Strong Heart, Round Hand

The
1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie was signed by many chiefs Ephriam
mentioned in the image of his initial post:
Fire Heart, Kills Eagle, Sitting Crow, Grass, Two Hearts (all
of them were later headman at Standing Rock), Rattles as he
Walks (headman at Cheyenne River 1875/76), Smoke, Walking Eagle,
Chief White Man, Black Shield. —
Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

This is according to John Grass report,
Wajaje- Kill Eagle's band
Red Blackfeet Band
Kangicu- Wear's Crow Feathers in Hair band. —
Ladonna